The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923 by Edward Hallett CarReview by: Robert V. DanielsThe American Historical Review, Vol. 56, No. 4 (Jul., 1951), pp. 891-892Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1852022 .

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Carr: The Bolshevik Revoltution 89I

peasants care oiliy for material comfort. There are no (loubt individual workers anid pcasants, like individual bureaucrats, capitalists or memlbers of any other social group, who care onliy for tlhese things. But no Western apologist for com- munism, nor any outside observer of any political complexion, has the right to decide whether the workers and peasants of Eastern Europe are capable of "appreciating freedom of thought" [p. 287].

In organization and treatment, Mlr. Seton-Watson's book is a sequel to his earlier study. It deals with all the countries from the Baltic to the Aegean and from Germany to the Soviet Union. It includes two introductory chapters on the historical background, five chapters on the war period, and seven on the post- war developments-political, economic, social, religious, and diplomatic. Miss Warriner ignores altogether Greece and Rumania, and in her consideration of the other countries she concentrates largely on the economic changes. In the first four chapters she describes the process of Communist consolidation of power, from the broad "National Fronts" of the resistance period to the "People's Democracies" which were established as a transitional form of government on the way to complete socialization and sovietization. The remaining five chapters deal with "The Plans," "Planning in Practice," "Land for the Peasants," "Col- lective Farming," and "The Economic Consequences." It is here that Miss Warriner is at her best and makes her chief contribution. For general purposes Mr. Seton-Watson provides the most comprehensive and useful account, but in the economic field Miss Warriner is more informative and informed.

North western University L. S. STAVRIANOS

THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION, I9I7-I923. By Edward Hallett Carr. Volume I. [A History of Soviet Russia.] (New York: Macmillan Company.

I95I. Pp. X, 430. $5.00.)

The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, is the first installment of an ambitious effort to cover the entire history of Soviet Russia from an analytical, institutional point of view; it is to be followed by another series under the title The Struggle for Power, I923-28. The Revolutionary period is to be covered in five parts: "The Man and the Instrument," "The Constitutional Structure," "Dispersal and Re- union," "The Economic Order," and "Soviet Russia and the World." Of these the first three are included in the present work while the following two will appear as Volumes II and III, respectively.

The work is not intended to fill the need for a comprehensive history of Soviet Russia, being designed as an institutional stucly. In fact, it is not a unified history at all but rather a collection of three separate monographs, rather deficient in presenting an over-all picture of the revolutionary process. The three parts must necessarily be evaluated separately.

Part I on Lenin and the pre-Revolutionary background of the Bolshevik party is a clear, systematic treatment of party history, evidencing good scholarship

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892 Reviews of Books

applied to a confusing subject. The basic thesis developed here is a valuable idea and well stated-it is probably the best contribution of the entire book-that the revolutionary movement came to power, in defiance of the Marxian prognosis, without the objective material conditions necessary for the organization of a socialist society. Once this fact is realized, it becomes clear that the subsequent de- velopment of Soviet society has not been toward socialism at all but toward an entirely different social order rationalized with socialist terminology, the rational- ization being enforced with the familiar machinery of political and ideological control. In the opinion of this reviewer, the wide recognition of this situation would be of vast importance in analyzing and allaying the current world tension, as well as in rectifying the widespread intellectual confusion caused directly or indirectly by the experience of the Russian Revolution.

Part II of Carr's work is a moderately useful exposition of the formal develop- ment of Soviet political institutions, though the insight developed in Part I is not applied. It is particularly good on the little-appreciated semi-legal existence of the non-Bolshevik Socialist parties in 1920, and on the process of the centraliza- tion of power. A serious weakness appears, however, in the treatment of the factional controversies within the Communist power, where the author appears guilty of a bias common to many non-Communist writers on the Soviet Union who, in their efforts to be objective, absorb much of the official Stalinist attitude toward Communist oppositionists.

Parts II and III are seriously weakened by an excessively constitutional ap- proach resulting in empty formalism and a serious distortion of the substance of Soviet historical development. Carr admits as much in remarking on the unim- portance of Western constitutional concepts to the Russian and Communist mind, but again he forgets his own insight in undertaking an essentially misleading organization of the material.

As to the substance of Part III, the political history of the border regions and Communist policy toward them, the author has introduced much interesting and clarifying material on a subject rarely treated systematically, but it would seem more appropriate to include this topic in Part V with the history of the civil war.

Two special sections, on the theory of the state and of self-determination, appear to be entirely superfluous and out of place in this context.

The author's style leaves something to be desired; it evidences a defect familiar to many students of Russia, who find on going over their own work in first draft that it reads like a translation from Russian. This and other stylistic and typographical imperfections indicate an overhasty publication effort, inappropriate for a book which, according to the jacket, is "destined to become a classic." This book, though useful in many matters of detail, is a disappointment insofar as it attempts a new integration of Soviet history. The monumental work of synthesis remains to be undertaken.

Harvard University ROBERT V. DANIELS

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